Wire shelving is growing increasingly common in homes and businesses due to its low-cost and durable nature. Wire shelving may be securely mounted to a wall using various types of brackets and fasteners. Alternatively, vertical standards having one or more vertical rows of apertures (or slots) may be secured to a wall, with the wire shelving supported by brackets configured to engage one or more of the apertures of the standards. In this latter arrangement, the height of the wire shelving may be adjusted by moving the brackets to engage another set of apertures. The brackets used to support wire shelving with respect to slotted (or apertured) standards typically can also be used to support other types of shelving (such as solid shelving made of wood or other materials).
Shelving is often used in residences and other locations at which it is desirable to hang items of clothing. In fact, some wire shelving include an integral hanger rod which is positioned beneath the wire shelf, typically directly beneath the front edge of the shelving (or sometimes spaced somewhat rearwardly of the front edge). Other wire shelving, however, do not include an integral hanger bar, and adding a hanger bar to an existing installation will often require the purchase of entirely new wire shelving. In other words, it is often not possible to add a hanger rod to existing wire shelving. In the case of solid shelving supported by traditional brackets and standards, it is similarly difficult to add a hanger rod to such installations.
An additional problem often associated with traditional hanger bar designs is that the support members used to attach the hanger bar to the shelving will interfere with the sliding of a hanger along the hanger bar. In fact, it is not uncommon for the support brackets to limit the ability to slide a hanger across the entire length of the hanger bar. Although U.S. Pat. No. 5,836,461, which is incorporated herein by way of reference, provides a solution to this problem, it is difficult to retrofit existing wire shelving (or, for that matter, other types of shelving) with the support hooks and hanger rod disclosed in this patent.